Taking This One To the Grave
by paperthins
Summary: Harry really can't help it. How it seems that he is made of two people merged together yet he knows it is what makes him whole. He really can't help that he doesn't understand other people; their emotions, their thoughts, what makes themselves them. He really can't help how he knows that he is more special: a rose amongst thorns. It's really not his fault.
1. Prologue

_Cowritten by Pandora and Glass.  
Beta'd by Tithed  
Encouragement (and cookies) from Peas and Iconic  
Team Paperthins_

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minorSociopathic!Harry/ later slash HPxTMR/ AU/ horcrux!Tom  
there is no dark or light. Pandora simply hates the shit out of labels and how one thinks that the world is so simple.

_revised-_The Team's notes: This chapter is written by Glass. The fey (**excess amount in this chapter**) it is only a _minor yet important part of the story_. Meaning it serves it purpose here and nothing more. You'll have to read it to get it _(hint/: the heart /)_. Emphases on the word _minor_. And as we _know_ that people will ask (and we do, as they did), there will no be any fey-character/Harry, only future Tom/Harry.  
Let's just pretend that there's a disclaimer here, shall we?_  
_

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_Prologue: Death Pale Were they All_

She threw herself of the bed and onto the stone floor, wheezing as she clutched her chest desperately. The place where her heart once was flared into a brilliant heat, scorching her skin. Touching the place with her fingertips, the Queen couldn't help but wince as she slid her left cheek against the frigid coldness, feeling the stark contrast. Her body temperature slowly dropped back to its usual lack of warmth, and so she laid eagle spread on the ground, her head facing down until she gained back her breath.  
The Queen gently picked herself up and wondered what it meant for her and her kingdom, as she looked over to the glass jar that held her frozen heart.  
It was gone. _  
_She strode to the nearest window and parted a curtain to the side carelessly with a finger, and she stared into the falling snow, losing herself in the whiteness of it all.

_The Lady of the Night Court laid on a récamier and idly picked a snowflake out from its swirling brethren with the tips of her fingers and gently tore the edges off.  
Decorators from the northern Sidhe isle- all around the ridge and down the coast till the edges of Tír na nÓg, bearing swathes of gossamer wings and Wyrme scales and pale jewels, came to the Palace to decorate the Winter Court for Calan Gaeaf.  
Footsteps crunched on the snow echoed behind her and she allowed the person to wait, as of protocol. She herself stared up into the endless white, continuing to absentmindedly break the tiny glass shards, feeling a sense of wetness spread across her already damp fur as she dusted her fingertips onto her lap.  
"Maeve, it's Maeve," a young childling cried as he tugged excitedly onto his mother's dress and she smiled with the edges of her lips when she heard her name called with the lack of proper decorum that the Court demands. She hadn't held an execution for her honor in ages.  
The person shifted behind her, and she looked up, bored at the snowflakes and annoyed at the presence. Realizing that it was only a mere guard and not the seamstress that her mother had promised her, Maeve simply lifted up an eyebrow and stared at him. The wolf, with its glossy white fur whined and the hand on its collar tightened.  
"The Winter Queen wishes to see you, Lady of Night, in her personal chambers. I am to be your escort there."  
The knight's voice was bland and without emotion, alert yet bored, but she could see through his practiced façade. Who didn't want to see how the Queen lived?  
She nodded without word and followed the guard with the wolf as they strolled into the Garden of Edyme and passed by the numerous protection wards and a mixture of archers and guards that held their weapons ready and bowed to the younger.  
It was when they reached the Inner Sanctum, marked by pillars of ice, that her escort found he could not go any further, and so with a silent bow he quickly departed.  
Maeve took a deep breath and entered.  
She ignored the beauty of the garden, the sacred altar underneath broad trees where glazed diamonds dripped of the branches and reflected the moonlight into the shadows. She only saw her mother lying on a hammock and knew immediately that there was something dreadfully wrong.  
"Mother," Maeve whispered softly and kneel into the soft dirt, dirtying her silks, as she stared up to meet her mother's eyes.  
They were blank, with barely a spark, nothing compared to the ones that held so much life before.  
She could see tears that trail down slowly, not dripping, just glistening on the cheekbones.  
"My dear Maeve," the Queen said, her voice merely a weak rustling of the trees. Trembling fingers parted her barely knotted robe and pushed the fabric open.  
Her skin was deathly pale, as white as fresh snow. Maeve could see the blue veins underneath the papery skin that traced the flesh all the way to her heart-  
She couldn't help but gasp. Her mother's left breast was all black.  
__Maeve recoiled violently, flinching at her mother, her eyes betrayed._  
A Fey's heart turns black when it dies of heartbreak.  
"Unrequited love," her mother whispered, reaching out her hand as if to stroke her daughters cheek.  
_Maeve couldn't contain a horrified gasp as her feelings surged though her mouth. _  
"You," she sneered disbelievingly, almost laughing at the sheer absurdity of the situation. "the great Queen Faery of Coldness and Night, in love with a human! A human! A mere light flickering vainly in the darkness trying to survive, some unimportant speck of- of-"  
She bit her bottom, hard enough to draw blood, as she kept her trembling fists at the side.  
They both watched the redness dribble down and sink into the snow. The white reached up and swallowed it whole, and soon all was calm.  
Her mother silently reached into the old oak tree and drew out a shard of sparkling ice. Maeve could see the moonlight reflecting itself all across the garden, and back into their faces. Wincing at the sudden light, she turned to stare at the darkness.  
"Maeve," the Queen said again, heartrendingly sad.  
"Maeve, come closer."  
She wanted to refuse, to run away, yet she found her feet shuffling close to the hammock against her will.  
The Queen touched her own tear stained face briefly, and with wet fingers she drew a star over her daughter's heart, on top of the many layers of silk and fur and bone.  
"May my legacy live on."  
Maeve looked back silently, already knowing what would happen to heartbroken Fey.  
The Queen raised up the shard up and paused, then looked over to Maeve.  
"He had the greenest eyes I had ever seen. The most vivid shade of emerald."  
Then she plunged the knife down, and black liquid poured out, from the gash in her dead heart, and the poison flooded over her silk robes, black against white, ash against bone, pooling over blue veins and pale skin, and the rest onto the forest floor.  
_A tree of black iron sprang up, next to a delicate flower of smooth red stones._  
_She felt the onyx circlet around her head shift into a crown and Maeve knelt onto the ground again and wept._

_She was weak, Maeve thought. I will never be like her, to die for the sake of love._  
_She could hear herself ask Mother what would the Tuadhe d'Anu say._  
_It was Samhain, a few months before a year has gone by after her mother's death. She was back into the Inner Sanctum, having slipped away from the festivals after the customary feast when power shifted back to her courts. The garden was a place of rest where she fairly often visited after made Queen, having a sense of solitude and comfort underneath the trees._  
_It was also the day when the link of her heart and soul was almost nonexistent, and so she stood in the garden, in a carefully made circle of newly spilled grave dirt; her back towards the black iron tree of her mother's poison and the red flower that never bloomed. The moonlight shifted softly downwards, and Maeve started to chant, of heartbreak and loneliness and pain and anguish, then of her mother, the late Queen Brìghde whose heart was too soft, then of herself, the Queen Who Will Have No Heart To Break as she bathed naked in the light._  
_And when the light fell onto her chest, Maeve felt a sense of cold peacefulness, an emptiness of where her heart should have beaten a slow boom boom boom was replaced with calm that she had never achieved before in her meditation in the snow._  
_Maeve smiled as she walked slowly to the black tree, the feeling of walking on air, without being anchored onto the ground with her heart._  
_On top of the tree was a glass jar, completely sealed with no opening, smooth, clear, and without flaw. In it was her heart, slowly beating, with a carved star in the middle. She frowned thoughtfully as she recalled the symbol her mother drew with her tears on her chest, and picked up the jar that was nestling in a pile of iron thorns carefully, to prevent shredding her cold flesh._  
_That night, the outcast dead shifted uneasily in their graves made in dust and shadows and waited._

James Potter thought that he had the most awesome son _ever _in the world- the little bundle had eyes the most vivid shade of emerald green that was even brighter than Lily's, perfect ten wiggly little toes, extremely pale skin and also a birthmark, a red star, which in his opinion was extremely kick ass. Sirius even said that it was something cool that girls liked, especially it was on his collarbone, like a tattoo of some sort, where everyone could see it. Lily dear of course had weakly swatted at his best friend's face, saying that he was only, like say maybe _ten minutes old_, but James could already see that his son would be a looker like him.  
James smiled, for life was perfect.


	2. Interlude

_Cowritten by Pandora and Glass.  
Beta'd by Tithed  
Encouragement (and cookies) from Peas and Iconic  
Team Paperthins_

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_The Team's notes: This one is written by Pandora. And yes, we know that there is an excess amount of 'him', 'he' and 'his' in this chapter; but it serves its purpose. Needless to say, the other chapters would be written "normally". It depends on how we wish to get our points across and what we eat that day (or lack thereof).  
-We do not own Harry Potter. _

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_Interlude: The Space of Nothingness between prologue and chapter one_

He stares back at himself.  
It is all lines and angles: triangular bones jutting out from his nonexistent cheeks, fingers that are little more than mere lines on paper, slanted eyes and arched brows.  
And his scars.  
He self consciously rubs the red Star of David on his collarbone with his thumb.  
He knows that his bruises fades away immediately, nothing but a faint tint to hint where his Uncle had once marked him; that cuts heal seamlessly, only leaving lines of pale silver, but nothing more than one or two marks on his otherwise perfect skin.  
But not the Star.

-  
He already knows that he is different.  
His eidetic memory.  
His power to control things with his will.  
His scars.  
-

Art class is always his favorite.  
There are no any predetermined subject for the children to draw by; after all they were only children, and children are known for their creativity. So the teachers always smile with indulgence as his classmates dunk scraps of material into paint or running markers dry, and praise their meaningless creations of disaster. The more adorable ones even got cooed at.  
He shudders at the mere thought of it.  
He will filch a fragment of snapped pencil that had splinters at the end from his cousin- if he can call that thing even that- and tucks both his precious piece of paper and himself in the corner where the art supplies are stored.  
Then, he will painstakingly try to draw a straight line down the paper. And he would continue, filling page after page; days after days of lines until he deemed them straight enough and could draw with ease.  
He continues to experiment the lines, staying away from rectangles and squares. It reminds himself of the cupboard that he lived in too much.

He finally curves his lips up after three months.

-  
How he was treated differently from the rest of his classmates.  
How he was special.  
How he just knew.  
-

It is tonight, he knows.  
He hurriedly escapes back into the cupboard, successfully dodging his uncle.  
Digging the paper out under his thin mattress, he uses his other hand to get the blade out before turning back to the mirror.  
It is the only good thing about them locking me in, he muses. They won't bother to unlock it anytime soon.  
He wonders what would his Aunt's face would be like if she sees that his cupboard walls has become a mirror.  
Or that he was the one that went to the kitchen at midnight to collect his, albeit cold, dinner instead of his cousin.  
He can't help but smile.

The blade itself is beautiful. Thin, and sharp at the tip and edges, with a silver rosette at the middle of the copper handle. Red stones hang in a chain at the end.  
He silently thanks his aunt and his ability to open locks.

-  
He knows that his classmates are scared of him.  
He also know that they are worthless.  
But perhaps it is because he doesn't understand what they are.  
This, he does not know.  
-

He didn't need to turn around to see his back. Digging the knife into his flesh, he feels a bubble popping then something deliciously warm dribble down. He smiles for the second time of the day before plunging the blade straight in then immediately down along his tailbone, carving his back into equal halves. Then he twists his head around to see his masterpiece.  
He can't help but moan softly at the sight with pleasure.  
There is no fresh blood gushing out this time; out of the semi dried redness is only a thin line of silver. His fingers move backwards on its own will and traces it downwards and he can't help but tremble- the slightly intoxicating rush floods his head and leaves his mouth dry and breathless.  
Ignoring his discarded shirt on the ground, he kisses the blade tenderly before gently nestling it on the moth eaten sweater then slides down painlessly onto his worn mattress.

Before he gives into nothingness, he knows that someone is going to die tomorrow before tossing over to his left side. His subconscious starts plotting.

That night, he dreams lights of pure green.  
That night, the red scar glows.


End file.
